Shelby Mahurin’s debut arrived with a promise I can never resist: a witch and a witch-hunter forced into marriage in a city that smells like pastry and gunpowder. Serpent & Dove takes a France-adjacent setting, threads it with church-versus-coven politics, and then drops two very different people into a single bed and says, “figure it out.” It launched a trilogy and a thousand fan debates because it’s equal parts banter, stakes, and kiss-or-kill tension.
What’s it about?
Cesarine is a city where witches burn and witch-hunters—Chasseurs—patrol in blue coats under the Archbishop’s blessing. Witches come in two main flavors: Dames Blanches, whose magic runs on balance and bargains (a price for every spell), and Dames Rouges, blood witches who work with sacrifice. Into this world slips Louise le Blanc—Lou—once the prized daughter of the Dames Blanches’ fearsome leader, Morgane. Lou fled her coven years ago to avoid a prophecy and a ritual with her name on it. Now she hides in the city’s underbelly, living by her wits and sticky fingers, partnered with Coco (a sharp, loyal Dame Rouge) and a fence named Bas who’d sell his own shadow for coin.
Across town, Reid Diggory is the Chasseurs’ golden boy: devout, disciplined, terrifyingly competent, raised from orphanhood by the Archbishop to be a blade of the Church. He believes witches are monsters because that’s what he’s been trained to see. Their collision is inevitable. Lou lifts the wrong thing from the wrong person; Reid chases; they tangle on a theater stage in an incident so public and compromising that the Archbishop grabs the cleanest solution at hand: marriage. A witch and a witch-hunter tied together before God and gossip pages. Lou says yes because a ring and a new name are better camouflage than any alleyway. Reid says yes because duty orders it—and because something about this chaotic thief already has him off balance.
What follows is enemies-to-roommates-to-something-else. Lou moves into the Chasseurs’ Tower, the worst place for a witch to hide and the only place where Morgane’s spies might hesitate. She keeps her magic on a tight leash (balance always demands payment), learns the barracks’ rhythms, and befriends Ansel, a sweet trainee with more heart than swagger. She sneaks out to meet Coco, who keeps the coven temperature and the city’s rumor mill warm. Reid, baffled by a wife who laughs in church and swears in the kitchen, tries to be a gentleman about a situation that dismantles his certainty. Their truce is pragmatic at first—don’t kill me, pass the butter—then starts to look like banter that doesn’t end when the door closes.
Pressure builds on every side. Morgane has not stopped hunting Lou; she sends elegant knives in the form of assassins. The Chasseurs tighten patrols as witch attacks escalate. Jean Luc, Reid’s ambitious rival, is watching for any misstep. Madame Labelle—glamorous brothel keeper with excellent intelligence and a suspicious interest in Reid—keeps turning up like a plot device with great hair. Lou’s magic complicates everything: even a small spell demands a cost (pain, a memory, a scar), and every time she pays it she risks outing herself to the man who shares her bed.
A raid goes sideways, a rescue goes messier, and Lou’s two lives crash. Reid proves over and over that his first instinct is protection, even when the target is the type of person he’s sworn to hunt. Lou proves she’s no one’s damsel, carving her own exits when walls close in. The marriage that started as punishment becomes cover and then—gradually—a partnership. But secrets rot foundations. Lou can’t tell Reid what she is without signing both their death warrants. He can’t imagine a world where witches are people without feeling his faith crack.
When Madame Labelle reveals her true hand, the gameboard reorders. She’s more than a courtesan; she has ties to the covens and to the Chasseurs, and a personal stake in Reid that complicates everything. The Archbishop—Cesarine’s moral center and political operator—has a past that refuses to stay buried, a past that threads straight through Reid’s life like a wick. Meanwhile, Morgane makes her move, snatching Lou in a gambit to complete the ritual she planned the day Lou was born.
The rescue mission pulls unlikely allies together: Reid, Ansel, Coco, Madame Labelle, and a handful of people with more reason to hate each other than to cooperate. The chase takes them into the teeth of Morgane’s territory, where the coven’s magic thickens the air and bargains are struck in whispers and blood. In the showdown, truths blow open: Morrisons fall from pedestals; parentage gets new names; and Lou’s history snaps into focus in a way that reframes every choice she’s made. The Archbishop meets an end that feels both shocking and inevitable. Morgane, too canny to die in book one, escapes with a promise that war is only getting started.
Back in Cesarine, the dust doesn’t settle so much as rearrange. Reid has to measure his vows against the person he’s become—with a wife he loves and a truth he was raised to hate. Lou has to decide how much of herself she’ll keep hidden when secrecy now protects a man instead of just a girl. The final pages aren’t tidy, but they’re charged: the marriage is real, the city is a powder keg, and the big bad is not finished. Cue book two.
What This Chick Thinks
Enemies-to-lovers with actual friction
The marriage isn’t a cute setup the book forgets; it’s the engine. Watching Lou weaponize humor against Reid’s rigidity—and Reid’s kindness against Lou’s instinct to bolt—was delicious. The attraction runs on banter, competence, and proximity, not just glow.
A magic system with bite
I love that Dames Blanches pay for power with balance—a trade that leaves marks. Spells feel costly and specific, which raises tension in every fight. It also makes Lou’s restraint meaningful; hiding isn’t just a plot device, it’s survival math.
Church vs. coven without strawmen
The Chasseurs aren’t all frothing zealots, and witches aren’t all benevolent rebels. The book lets belief, loyalty, and power be messy. Reid’s crisis of faith reads like a person thinking, not a speech.
Side characters who steal scenes
Ansel’s earnest bravery, Coco’s ride-or-die competence, Madame Labelle’s glamorous scheming—this bench is deep. Several emotional beats land because the team feels like more than ornaments around the leads.
The voice: modern, playful, occasionally anachronistic
The dialogue zips, and the humor keeps darker moments from swallowing the book. If you need scrupulously historical diction in your France-flavored fantasy, the slang may bump; I rolled with it and had fun.
Where it wobbles a touch
Villainy is sometimes operatic—Morgane reads “storybook wicked” more than nuanced, and one late reveal clicks into place very conveniently. A couple of location shifts feel like stage changes rather than lived-in places. But the momentum and chemistry carried me through.
Final Thoughts
Serpent & Dove is a glossy, high-tension fantasy romance that earns its heat with character work and lets its world-building sharpen as secrets fall. Come for the forced marriage trope; stay for the costed magic, the messy loyalties, and a partnership that feels like two people choosing each other with eyes open.
Rating: 8.5/10
Try it if you like:
- Kingdom of the Wicked — Kerri Maniscalco – Italianate setting, witches and princes of Hell, and a romance that prowls around a murder mystery.
- These Hollow Vows — Lexi Ryan – Dangerous courts, tricksy bargains, and a heroine playing a long game while her heart misbehaves.
- The Witch Hunter — Virginia Boecker – Witch trials, royal politics, and an enemies-to-allies arc between a zealot and the “monster” she was trained to hate.
